6 MCAT Study Tips to Dominate the New MCAT

As pre-meds everywhere are more stressed than ever before as they take on the new 7.5 hour long monster…

We at MCAT Mastery have decided to share some key MCAT study tips and habits we discovered from analyzing the learning habits of some of the highest scoring test-takers.

Here’s are 6 habits that differentiate the “average-scoring MCAT writers” from the MCAT Masters…

1 – Avoiding Shortsightedness During MCAT Prep

MCAT Masters realize that MCAT prep isn’t at all about cramming and figuring out short-cuts.

That might have worked throughout university for exams here and there.

The MCAT is different.

It almost seems too obvious to even mention this point here – but we constantly see pre-meds falling back to old habits towards the middle of their MCAT prep journey.

Truth be told, even those who do pass the MCAT with these techniques, suffer in med-school and throughout life in general, because quite frankly, that approach doesn’t work in real life…

2 – Knowing It’s About Optimization

MCAT Masters know the strategies to learn things once.

The route to fast learning is by not returning to concepts over and over again before they finally embed themselves in your mind. Most MCAT Masters are always looking to reduce the amount of times they re-read something.

They’re always looking to optimize their comprehension abilities.

Optimization is key when you have a deadline.

Being able to go through a concept once is always the aim for MCAT Masters – however, even if you’re able to reduce the number of times you re-visit concepts in half, you’ve made a massive improvement.

The strategiescovered here at MCAT Mastery, can show you how to do this.

3 – Shifting Your MCAT Perspective For Better Learning

MCAT Masters are genuinely interested in most, if not all, subjects covered on the MCAT.

If they’re not interested, they TRY to be.

Being interested doesn’t have to come naturally. You can change your perspective about the concepts you’re reading.

It requires effort in changing your viewpoint about Physics, even though it might be the most boring subject in the world for you.

Why does being interested really matter? Because the more interested you are in what you’re reading, the easier it will get to create connections in your mind.

Your mind is brilliant. It’s filled with huge amounts of information – no doubt – but all those gems of information are far from your reach and hard to find because there aren’t enough routes (connections) to get there.

On exam day, you want access to that information instantaneously. Get interested.

4 – Understanding How to APPLY Your Learning

MCAT Masters don’t just refine their perspective on what they’re learning, but they also refine their habits.

If you start recognizing the value of making connections and you’re genuinely interested in concepts you’re reading, but you still make the same crappy notes and you still cram last minute, then nothing matters.

Drop those old, self-injuring habits.

If you continue them now, you’ll continue them in med-school and med-school pressure will make you realize it’s time to change.

Then you finally will change those habits and your performance will skyrocket and you’ll wonder how different would life be if you made that habit change when writing the MCAT.

Learn from our mistakes and regrets.

Studying for the MCAT isn’t about just learning concepts and principles – that’s one thing – but the other half of it is applying you’ve learned…

5 – Taking Notes the Inspired Way

When MCAT Masters take notes, their focus is on organizing concepts and understanding their relationships with one another (i.e. making connections).

They don’t care about neatness. They’re not obsessed with creating ranked bullet-point structure. This is what we’ve been taught in school to follow.

MCAT Masters throw that way of conventional thinking out the window.

Taking notes, for MCAT Masters, is about facilitating their own learning methods, doodling down ideas that are inspired from them, and creating diagrams to better tie concepts together.

For MCAT Masters, taking notes is an imaginative process, not a robotic one.

6 – Getting Steps Ahead of the Competition

MCAT Masters who weren’t naturally “gifted” learners, who were average pre-meds before writing the MCAT, realized that they had to do something differently from the average pre-med during this competitive, bell-curved exam.

They realized that if they wanted to stand out in midst of all the med-school applicants and get that med-school interview from their top choice med-school, their MCAT score could help them make that a reality…

And it did. It always has.

MCAT Masters have always known that if they want to compete with all the pre-meds who are studying super hard for the MCAT, they had to not only study just as hard as them, but also study smarter than them.

What does “studying smart” mean?

Most pre-meds are going to be studying a lot – that’s a fact – but they’re not going to focus on learning things once…

They’re not going to genuinely try and be interested in what they’re reading to help themselves make connections…

They’re not going to know how to leverage practice tests…

They’re not going to know how to take notes creatively instead of robotically…

(You get where this is going…)

They’re not going to know how to apply proven MCAT prep strategies like the ones you’ve been reading here…

But you will.

You’ll have access to the best of the best MCAT prep strategies available anywhere…